


measure your life

by londer



Category: Dimension 20, The Unsleeping City
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26174455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londer/pseuds/londer
Summary: Sofie keeps a little disposable camera in her bag to document their adventures.
Relationships: The Dream Team - Relationship
Comments: 12
Kudos: 83





	measure your life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleboxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/gifts).



> i came up with this while sending prompts and was like hm nope actually i will be writing this one myself.  
> probably a multichapter eventually when i have more time :)

Dale used to always buy those shitty little disposable cameras to take photos on. He went to the Walgreens every month like clockwork to get them developed into prints. It was a lot of pictures of the deer in the yard, of Sofie around the house, of the sights when they would go on little weekend vacations. 

She saved her favorites before burning the house down, and they live in a little album she keeps under her bed at the monastery. When they're fighting in that bodega she sees a pack of the cameras, and La Grand Gata rubs against them as it talks to her. They glow with a blue shimmer, and she slips them into her purse when they're leaving. Kingston says that he's gonna make sure the insurance works out for the bodega owners, so she doesn't feel too bad about a little shoplifting. 

The camera never runs out of spare film canisters or turns out damaged prints, regardless of how many photos she takes or how battered or waterlogged it gets from living in her bag.

 _Roll one, photo five:_ A very poorly lit, flashback heavy shot, taken in the mirror of a club in Brooklyn. Sofie, Rowan, and Esther are crammed into a very small bathroom and are all posing at the mirror. Rowan is in all pink with her tits kinda out and her hair up in space buns and Esther's in black and looks like a super hot Catwoman and you can't fully see Sofie but she remembers that night and the wine stain never quite came out of that leopard print skirt. It was so hot in the club and the floor stuck to their shoes and they refused to dance with anyone except each other. Afterwards, back in Rowan's apartment, they ordered Insomnia cookies and pizza and stumbled around each other taking off their makeup and changing into PJs and sending too many silly-drunk texts to the Dream Team group chat. 

_Roll one, photo eight_ : Ricky, shirtless, sweaty, beaming at the camera, taken from the front stoop of Kingston's apartment where they were waiting for him to run here from work for Tuesday night family dinner. The sky behind him is rippled pink and purple and orange and in the corner of the frame you can just see Pete's sneaker from where he was sitting on the steps beside Sofie.

 _Roll one, photo twelve_ : Pete, extremely blurry. 

_Roll two, photos one through ten_ : A series of shots taken in the Met. She had given them homework for the trip: pick a painting on display and dress up as it. Rowan wore a frilly purple blouse for an O'Keefe, winking over her shoulder at Sofie behind the camera. Kingston's a Mondrian in primary checkerboard, Pete's a Charles Marion Russel in his cowboy hat, Esther wears blue and blends into multiple landscapes and ocean scenes. Ricky wears this bizarre gold and black jacket that looks absolutely nothing like anything that any of them have ever seen him wear before, but he blends perfectly into baroque portraits in it. (Esther spills later that he dragged her to a thrift store to find something because he didn't have anything he thought was good enough for Sofie's little art project, the absolute _darling_.) 

_Roll four, photo five_ : Em, backlit by the sun, making finger guns at the camera. Kingston is sitting at the base of the fountain, mouth wide open around a big sandwich, looking surprised at the camera. 

( _Roll four, photo six_ : Kingston, sandwich in hand, trying to take the camera away from Sofie.)

 _Roll four, photos eleven and **[twelve](https://smallestbrown.tumblr.com/post/633348819836370944/roll-four-photo-twelve-a-scene-from)**_ : Two photos of Pete, taken in quick succession in a coffee shop in Manhattan that's also a florist's shop. In the first, he's looking intently at his laptop, studying for his GED test. In the next, he's looking at the camera, nose scrunched and laughing, one hand reaching to take it from her. He's in a soft white t-shirt and the table is unfinished wood and the hazy background behind Pete is a mess of greenery.

 _Roll five, photo one_ : Kingston sitting on the L train, reading the newspaper like that's a thing people still do in public. His face is open and relaxed and the early morning sun spills through the window behind the camera and over his face, making him look younger. Sofie looks at this one for a long time when it's developed, and she can see the man Liz fell in love with is still there, just a little more worn with years of breathing and being the voice of a city. She makes sure to mention to Liz that Kingston was talking about her the next time they run into each other, and vice versa. Sofie's smart enough to know that they won't stand for being pushed back together, and she can be subtle about nudging them if she absolutely needs to be. 

_Roll five, photo two:_ Sofie, extremely blurry. 

Roll six is all photos she took when they went to Coney Island together. Everyone's hair is a mess and their faces are split wide with grins, except for Ricky who ate too many hot dogs on sticks and then threw up on a very mild roller coaster, who looks less enthusiastic and more exhausted. There's this one shot of Pete, Kingston, and Rowan all playing a ring toss booth game, half in motion and covered in rainbow light, that Sofie is particularly fond of.

 _Roll seven, photo eight:_ A shot of Esther summoning fire in her hands. Sofie can't quite catch the magic on the film because of the Umbral Arcana, but it does look very cool either way. Esther's face glows with the light from her palms and she's looking up at Sofie and the camera with a yellow glow cast across her face. It's a really nice shot. She thinks about maybe getting it screen printed on a t-shirt for Ricky to point to when people get insistent about asking him out. 

_Roll seven, photo ten:_ A selfie of the whole Dream Team, taken in the rooftop garden of Rowan's place after Tuesday family dinner one week. Ricky’s taking it with one long arm and they’re all crammed in together, pressed cheek to cheek to fit all six of them into the shot. 

_Roll seven, photo eleven_ : The same as the previous photo, but a little nicer because they rotated thirty degrees as a group for better lighting. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr [here](https://myclericalromance.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [he’ll say, yeah, man, this is my life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178880) by [nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife)
  * [[podfic] measure your life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408544) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




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